All in the Family

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From left: a stack of West African indigo cloths on a Directoire chair in Ian and Emilie Irving’s house on the East End of Long Island; ingredients, some extracted in a lab, for a new form of cooking invented by the co-creator of molecular gastronomy Hervé This; the sumptuous interior of the antiques shop Galerie J. Kugel in Paris.CreditFrom left: Simon Watson; François Coquerel; Thibault Montamat

By Deborah Needleman

Sept. 25, 2015

BECAUSE THIS IS an especially large edition of T, requiring fairly heroic effort on the part of the staff, I’d like to share a bit of the behind-the-scenes action here at The New York Times. The size of any magazine is generally a function of how many advertisers have bought space in it: the more ad pages, the more editorial stories. A couple of weeks before this issue was due to head off to the printer, ad-sales figures spiked 75 percent above what was expected — a fantastic boon in the beleaguered world of print journalism. Of course, we were excited by the news, but whereas we normally have several months to conceive, plan and execute ideas, we now had two weeks to make 40 additional pages.

I hope you will detect none of the manic last-minute scrambling, vacation-canceling, writer-cajoling and photographer-begging that went on here. I don’t think you will because of the seamless way T’s editors, photo editors, art directors and producers, as well as our loyal cadre of writers and photographers (many of whom on just days’ notice left their vacations to interview or shoot subjects who were in the midst of their own holidays), kicked into high gear.

To create our story on the allure of Puglia, for example, many of the subjects we wanted to photograph inside their various homes altered their schedules to accommodate ours, flying in from around the world. One of them arrived to find her house in total disrepair — no electricity or running water and construction debris everywhere — and so with every good reason emailed to cancel. Our design editor, Tom Delavan, pleaded with her, until she agreed to pose in a stairwell that brooked none of the surrounding chaos. Meanwhile, the airline had lost our photographer’s luggage with all of his equipment. Turns out, rental outfits across Italy close up shop for August. So our photo director, Nadia Vellam, emailed every photographer she knows in Italy for help until one of them suggested a rental guy she knew. He was closed, of course, but he happened to know of a photographer from Rome who was visiting his parents in a nearby town, and this photographer just happened to have some equipment in his trunk that he kindly loaned to ours.

Many stories met with similar travails. When the Irvings, whose home on Long Island we feature, failed to answer the phone when we were trying to set up an interview time, Tom drove to their house to see if he could find them. He discovered them on their front lawn with their furniture scattered about. Their house had flooded, and they were carting their soaked belongings up from the basement. Tom said he was sorry — but would they please come inside as he needed to ask them a few questions? (We had already convinced the photographer, who wasn’t feeling well, to shoot their house. Later, he discovered that he had pneumonia.)

I realize that all of this is a rather luxurious form of hustling, especially as we work in a newsroom that covers conflicts around the world, but it was awe-inspiring to see. Special thanks are due to Francesco Conti, Anthony Cotsifas, Hart + Lëshkina, Zane Zhou, Bea De Giacomo, John Derian, Sadie Stein, Ian and Emilie Irving, Simon Watson, Taiye Selasi, Bert Teunissen, Maura Egan, Leandro Farina, Alexandre Guirkinger and Stefano Aluffi-Pentini.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of David John Egan, a devoted and enthusiastic fan of the magazine.